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duhragonball · 3 months ago

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Chainsaw Man ch.63-66

Last time... uh, wow. Holy shit.

Okay, so all these assassins were coming after Denji, but the only three who matter are Germany's Santa Claus and his army of humans-converted-into-doll-monsters, Quanxi and her fiend minions, and Tolka and his master. While everyone else was fighting, Tolka managed to kill Denji using the power of the Curse Devil, and now his master has appeared to congratulate him. He wants to collect Denji's corpse and withdraw to complete their mission, but she tells him there's no need. Then she explains to him that he's become part of the family and talks about all the steps to creating a perfect doll.

I'm not sure I get the exact idea here, but Tolka's master touches him and he starts robotically walking around in the department store the battle is in. And then Germany's Santa Clause steps inside the store, while Tolka's Master stands outside.

Clearly, these three are all on the same team, and I guess Tolka's master is the granddaughter of Santa? Or maybe she just thinks she is? My guess is that she's another one of his dolls, but more sophisticated than the others we've seen. And Tolka is a doll she made just to carry out this task. But to what end?

Well, Santa stabs himself and calls out to a devil, offering his own heart and children in exchange for something, but what?

Turns out he's talking to the "Hell Devil", which... okay, nice flex. And he's asking for the Hell Devil to take everyone in the department store to hell. Also, here's those four kids he got as payment for this job.

Look, they're eating spaghetti! And... OH NO!

Ohhhhhh no...

So I got to this part and the art just completely blew me away. This is the best part of the whole series so far. It's kind of thin on story, but the visuals are just amazing. All the characters we've seen fighting lately are now in this weird landscape with fingers crawling around like worms. Or maybe they're just laying there. I prefer the idea that Hell has severed fingers crawling around the ground. The sky is covered in doors.

All the fiends are freaking the fuck out, and Denji is alive-ish? But not quite. The Angel Devil recognizes the scent of hell, and that's really the only clue they get as to what just happened to all of them. Quanxi asks one of her fiends how they can get out of here, and she freaks the fuck out.

Okay, so as Angel Devil explained before, the devils in this story can't truly be killed. If you destroy one on Earth, it gets reincarnated in hell, and when it's killed in hell, it eventually reappears on Earth. So it's this endless cycle of death and rebirth. However, there are devils who represent primordial fears, transcendent devils who have never left hell, because they have never been killed, even once. And that's what makes this place so terrifying. Whatserbutt would rather kill herself than face these kinds of horrors, and as soon as they draw the attention of any of them, they'll be doomed.

And then here comes the Darkness Devil.

This rules. I don't understand the astronaut thing, but it's awesome.

This guy just sort of walks up to these idiots and their arms all fly off their bodies. They're completely helpless.

The only one who seems to know what's going on is Tolka, if this even is Tolka. He kneels before the Darkness Devil, and maybe he summoned the guy here? I dunno. Anyway, he identifies himself as the Doll Devil, so maybe that's who he was all along, or Santa created him to serve as a vessel for the Doll Devil. Anyway, Doll Devil had a contract with the Darkness Devil. In exchange for Chainsaw Man's heart, he asks for the power to kill Makima.

Wait, what?

So, remember last time, when Master Kishibe tried to form an alliance with Quanxi, and he used written messages to communicate, because apparently Makima could hear him? Well, the Germans who contacted Germany's Santa Claus did the same thing. While that guy was talking to the old man about how many kids he would take as payment for killing Denji, they were actually discussing a plot to kill Makima. Apparently Denji was just a means to an end. Trade his heart for a piece of the Darkness Devil's flesh, and feed it to Tolka's Master, who is apparently Santa's new body. Or maybe she was always Santa's original body, and the old man was a puppet. Or... whatever.

So what about all the guys stuck in hell? What about them? Darkness Devil decapitates Tolka/Doll Devil, and I don't even know why. Whatsisbutt tries to use his power to turn things to stone, but....

Darkness just grabs the Stone Devil who made that power possible in the first place. Looks like he destroys Stone and the guy contracted to him.

Beam tries to pull Chainsaw Man's rip cord, but Darkness dismembers him. I'm not sure this would have made any difference, since Chainsaw Man can't seem to transform all the way. But Beam greatly admires Chainsaw, so it's no surprise that he'd try this.

Darkness Devil takes out a few more of these guys and I'm not even sure how. At least he pointed at Beam. What makes this so eerie is how quiet this is. I mean, there's sound effects, but still. Something about this feels like it's happening in a profound silence.

Then the Violence Fiend tries to attack. We met him earlier in the story, and his deal is that the Violence Devil was insanely powerful, and normally when Devils become fiends that weakens them, but Violence Fiend is still incredibly powerful anyway. He wears this mask which I think is supposed to regulate his power, and so in this situation he asked Kobeni to remove it and run away. So this is Violence Fiend Unleashed, but it still doesn't accomplish anything. Dakrness Devil makes some.... sound... and....

I dunno, chunks of him are just gone now. As he falls, someone hops off his back to fight in his place...

I'm not sure what to make of this. Maybe Denji's Chainsaw power is enough to upset the Darkness Devil? This looks like a reaction of some sort. I can't really interpret it, but this is more than the other characters got when they tried to fight.

It still doesn't work, though. Darkness Devil does some sort of thing and Denji's arms and legs twist in all sorts of bone-crunching directions.

To his credit, Violence tries again, and a big-ass sword appears over Darkness Devil's head, and Violence Fiend gets impaled on it. A bell jingles, and he explodes.

Oh, and while this is going on, Aki is losing it, because he recently gained the power to see into the future. So I think that means he's getting to experience this horror in stereo. All this death reminds him of Himeno's death, and he's losing teammates again, and he can do nothing to stop it.

Angel drops dead next, and then Aki. Oh shit, I hadn't even noticed the hands coming out to get him. That's pretty spooky.

Suddenly the Spider-Fiend shows up! Oh, right. Makima ordeered her to stick close and pull Denji out of danger if things got bad. So she must have been in the department store too when this happened. But her ambush is no more successful than the others.

I really like the "ribbit" here. What makes Darkness Devil so effective is that he's so profound. He's not a bad guy dressed in black, or hidden in the shadows. He's the personification of darkness itself. Some caveman got lost at night and heard frogs croaking and it was absolutely fucking terrifying because he had no idea what those were or what was going to happen next. There's no rational explanation for anything Darkness Devil has done. Why does it care about Chainsaw Man's heart? Why is it even bothering to attack the others? Why is it using different powers on some of them? There's no way to know. We're in the dark.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Makima is somehow aware of what's going on, and she's in contact with the Spider Fiend. She asks her to summon Makima to Hell, and Spider-Fiend obliges.

Oh come on! Makima can beat this thing too? This is insane?

I guess they kind of both hurt each other? It's not clear what Makima even did here, but okay.

This gives Makima time to... do something to the Doll Devil, which causes Tolka's body to offer itself to the Hell Devil, and thus send them all back to Earth.

The Darkness Devil impales Makima with her sword, which I suppose means that she could defeat Makima given enough time, but Makima was prepared for this and now that the Hell Devil is taking them all back, they can return to Earth back to the way they were before they left.

Meanwhile, Santa uses her newfound Darkness Devil power to assemble her dolls into a new doll body.

Makima returns close to where Santa Claus is, and she pulls the cord to reactivate Chainsaw Man. Apparently he's okay now that he's out of hell. She asks him to rescue her from Santa Claus and he replies "woof".

So yeah, this was a trip.

#chainsaw man #denji #makima #aki hayakawa #darkness devil #germany's santa claus #tolka #i dunno i don't feel like tagging anyone else tbh

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duhragonball · 4 months ago

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Chainsaw Man Ch.53-62

I've got a lot to cover here, so let's just dive right in.

Last time, Denji fell in love (again) and got his heart broken when the girl turned out to be a Russian agent sent to assassinate him. He seemed to think it could still work out somehow, but he hasn't seen her since their fight, and I'm pretty sure he never will, since Makima had her killed in Chapter 52. Not sure if Denji knows that part, but there you have it.

So he's pretty depressed about the whole thing, and he's been having dreams where Pochita calls out to him from behind a locked door "Don't open it." Don't open the door? I guess. Also, Denji's a kid in this dream, so I don't know if that means anything.

He quickly bounces back from his funk when Makima invites him, Power, and Aki to join her on a vacation in Enoshima.

Buuuuuut the trip is postponed when Makima learns that the news media is covering the Chainsaw Man, who was seen fighting Reze and Typhoon Devil in the previous arc. This is a problem, because Makima considers Chainsaw Man a very valuable asset in the hunt for Gun Devil, but now the whole world knows she has Chainsaw Man, and she expects other nations to send agents like Reze to capture him.

Makima reasons that this was Reze's goal all along. The Russians sent her after Denji, and maybe their plan was to start a big enough ruckus that Public Safety couldn't keep Chainsaw Man a secret any longer. So even if the Russians couldn't get Denji for themselves, they could at least make it harder for Makima to keep him.

That makes sense up to a point, except it doesn't quite line up with Reze's actions. She took a very subtle approach with Denji, and seemed very intent on killing him as quietly as possible. The big battle in the city might have been Plan B, but at the end of the arc, she admitted that she had failed by taking too long to fight Denji. So if her true mission was simply to expose him to the world, she sure didn't act like it.

So why the hell is Chainsaw so damn important anyway? Denji's pretty formidable now that he's merged with Pochita, but Pochita didn't seem all that special by himself, and all these players seem to be fixated on the Chainsaw Devil, not Denji. Gun Devil's gone after him, the Russians have gone after him, and now Makima is expecting other countries to send their own agents. But why?

The answer seems to have something to do with the fact that other devils are terrified of Chainsaw Man's power. Aki discussed this with Angel Devil recently, and Angel explained to him that when you kill a devil, they don't actually die. They turn to ash and simply reincarnate in hell. Then they live as devils in hell, basically doing the same thing there, until they're killed in hell, which causes them to reincarnate on Earth.

This has to do with the devils being manifestations of fears. People are afraid of guns, so there's a Gun Devil. People are afraid of bats, so there's a Bat Devil. Apparently enough people are afraid of tomatoes to get a Tomato Devil started. So it kind of makes sense that you can never permanently kill these things. Those fears don't just go away, so it follows that they can resurface after a time. I'm not sure how this cycle works, but Angel Devil doesn't even understand it himself. He doesn't remember his time in hell, and he compares it to a human having no memory of the womb.

Angel's point in all of this is that he's spoken to other devils who work in Public Safety, and while they don't remember hell very well either, they do recall a very specific sound they heard when they were killed in hell. And that sound was the revving of a chainsaw.

So that suggests that the Chainsaw Devil, Pochita, is the manifestation of the devils' collective fear. He's the boogeyman of all boogeymen. Then again, if Pochita was killing them all down in hell, how did he end up on Earth when he met Denji? Someone must have killed Pochita in hell, right?

At this point, it seems likely that everyone wants to control Denji so they can use Chainsaw as a weapon. Devils were eating Gun Devil flesh to get stronger, so it's likely that eating Chainsaw flesh would give them an even bigger buff. As for the humans, apparently they just really don't want Makima to control Chainsaw, even though she plans to use him against Gun Devil, which seems like it'd be in everyone's best interest.

All right, let's talk about the characters who go to Japan to hunt down Denji. First, we have these three guys from America. I call them "The Immortals" because I don't think we ever learn their full names. They have a contract with the Skin Devil that allows them to impersonate other people, and they've survived a lot of hardships in their lives, including the Gun Devil attacks, so they consider themselves indestructible.

Next we have Tolka and his master. I guess they're Russians, but I don't think this is spelled out. Tolka's master has him kill, skin, and cook a fox, just to prepare him for their mission of hunting and killing a 16-year-old boy. She wants to know if he can go through with such a thing, and he seems to believe he's up for the job.

Next we have Quanxi, a Chinese assassin. She has a squad of four fiends who help her on missions and such. Also, they fuck constantly. This army guy just walks in on them while they're in bed together and tells her about the mission to kill Denji, and they're both pretty casual about the whole thing. It's like they both understand that there's no point waiting for her to get done fucking, so he can just walk right in and state his business.

Beijing apparently is willing to grant her just about anything for her to take this job, and she thinks about it and requests human rights and a basic education for her harem of demon skanks. I just want to point out that one of them keeps saying the word "Halloween!" over and over again, so that's probably some sort of learning disorder. Also, I like how the CCP will do anything within their power to pay Quanxi for this, and she asks for human rights and they're like "Ouch, gee, that's a tall order, but we'll see what we can do." Like they were hoping she'd just ask for a solid gold house or a new eyeball.

Somehow, Makima already knows Quanxi is coming... Uh... sorry. Bad choice of words. But as dangerous as Quanxi is, the real threat is.... Germany's Santa Claus. What the fuck? Do I even want to know?

No. No, I do not. Germany's Santa Claus is an old man who takes the job and asks for four "good looking" children as payment. He plans to sacrifice three of them to make contracts with devils for more power, and the fourth one is "for pleasure", and that just might be the most spine-chilling pair of words in this entire series. Fuck you, Germany's Santa Claus. Just... no. Fuck.

Hey, here's these guys. I don't know who the hell they are, and it doesn't matter because the Immortal Bros. run their car off the road and gun them down in order to assume one of their identities and infiltrate Public Safety.

The problem with this whole part of the story is that there are a lot of new characters being tossed around here, and a lot of them are just young men in suits with fairly normal features. Chainsaw Man has demonstrated to me just why so many other manga characters have outrageous hairdos and wardrobes. All six of these characters look pretty similar, and one of them is a woman, for crying out loud. Fortunately, only two of them matter much here. The Elder Immortal, the one with the soulpatch, plans to impersonate Kurose, the Public Safety guy with the scar across his nose.

As he prepares to do this, he asks his brothers, Joey and Aldo, how they feel about the murder they just did. Joey's cool with it, but Aldo throws up, because it's his first killing.

So just keep Kurose's face in mind, even though the real Kurose is dead, and Elder Immortal is imitating him. He's got a scar running horizontally across his face. The other one who matters is Aldo, who has two scars over his right eye.

See, the logistical problem Public Safety has is that they're devoting all their resources to defending Denji, but they can't just hide him out in the mountains somewhere, because even though the agents pursuing him might not know his human appearance, they have contracts with devils who can sniff him out. Hiding Denji is all but impossible, so Makima just has him and Power go about their day-to-day business, but with a bunch of Public Safety guys standing guard over them all the time. Denji hates this because they boss him around constantly, and he soon realizes that this arrangement isn't to protect him at all. He's bait. They're hoping to draw out his pursuers, and maybe defeat some of them and convince the rest that it's not worth the trouble.

Meanwhile, Tolka and his master are eating in the same McDonalds as Denji and Power. Tolka's master has a contract with the Curse Devil, the same one Aki used a while back. The difference is that Tolka's master actually knows how to use the ability. She uses a nail instead of a sword, which allows her to poke Denji three times without him even noticing. Once she gets him a fourth time with the nail the curse will activate and insta-kill him. She leaves this task to Tolka. I guess this is like a final exam for his apprenticeship under her.

Fake Kurose shows up and tells the others that his two comrades were killed in an ambush, but he insists on continuing to help on the mission. He starts being all friendly to get good and infiltrated when...

Power hits him with her car. No, wait, it's Kobeni's car. Power saw it and wanted to drive it, because it reminded Power of her car, which looks exactly like Kobeni's car... Wait, did Kobeni steal Power's car? How could you, Kobeni? We all trusted you!

No, wait, Kobeni was the one driving and it's definitely her car because it was used to commit manslaughter. But wait, Kurose's face changes and he's one of those American hitmen! Power immediately takes credit for exposing his ruse.

So what about the other Immortal Bros.? Well, they were also nearby, but disguised as bystanders. They're horrified to see their big brother die so randomly, and Aldo pukes in an alley while Joey swears revenge. But he immediately gets spotted by a Public Safety guy and killed on the spot.

That just leaves Aldo, who only survives because he puts his disguise back on, and the Public Safety guy decides he can't be a hitman because he's throwing up. So now Aldo's on his own.

I'm kind of focusing on the Immortals' part of the story because frankly German Santa Claus and Tolka's Master haven't make their moves yet, and Quanxi just fucks her henchwomen instead of pursuing her target. Also this was the part of the arc I had trouble following, because of shapeshifters disguising themselves as the same background character.

Okay, so now Aldo's fucked, and the cops go to his hotel, so he can't stay there, so he uses what little information he had on Kurose to go visit Kurose's brother. This isn't a bad idea, except it really strains Aldo's already precarious mental state. He just watched his brothers die, and now he has to pretend to be this guy's brother and try to keep up appearances. I really enjoy this page where you see them from outside the apartment window, and all the word balloons are inside the window with them. Aldo's just completely trapped in this nightmare and he doesn't know what to do.

Kurose's brother thinks that he must be stressed out from work, and tries to talk him into quitting the Devil Hunter business. He asks what their big brother would say, and Aldo recalls what his actual older brother used to say, which gives him the resolve to see this job through. He spends the next few chapters trying to work up the courage to find Denji and kill him.

But we're not going to see that play out just yet. No, first it's Germany's Santa Claus' turn. His power comes from the Doll Devil, and anyone her touches is turned into a zombie-like doll who must do his bidding. Anyone the dolls touch is also turned, and the conversion is irreversible. This one guy guarding Denji has a contract that lets him turn people to stone, so that helps, but there's too many dolls coming after them, so they have to withdraw.

The stuff with the dolls is kind of fun, but it's not too different from other zombie battles we've already seen in this series. Then Quanxi and her minions enter the fray, and Quanxi does this big leap with swords, and everyone along her path gets cut in two. I'm not sure if Quanxi's fiend-skanks are assisting with this or what. This is like one of those JoJo arcs where there's two Enemy Stand Users at the same time, and it's impossible to figure out which one is doing what. Only multiply that by a hundred because Tatsuki Fujimoto can't stop adding characters to this story.

I don't understand her power, but the artwork for it is phenomenal. Dolls and civilians alike are massacred in a single stroke. I guess Quanxi does something similar to Janemba's sword slashes in Fusion Reborn, maybe?

Aki manages to block the effect before it kills Angel Devil, or I think that's what he's doing. They survive, but it knocks the wind out of them.

I'm kind of skipping around here, but Master Kishibe-- not Tolka's master, but the guy who trained Power and Denji-- subdues Quanxi's minions, then confronts her in the mall they're fighting in. They sit down at a table and talk while Denji and Power hold the girls hostage. This is one of those deals where the two grisled veterans talk it out for old time's sake. He seems to be trying to convince Quanxi to give up peacefully, but it's not that simple.

While they speak, he holds up a notepad that reads "Makima is listening", then reveals that he's planning to kill Makima, and he's willing to let her go, and even tell her his plan if she agrees to help him.

The thing is, she starts fighting again shortly after this, so I can't tell if she's doing that to keep up appearance, since Makima would be expecting a battle, or if she rejected Master Kishibe's offer. We'll probably find out later, but there's a lot of other stuff going on, so it'll probably be a while. The important thing for now is that Kishibe has gone from being suspicious of Makima to outright plotting against her, and he seems to trust a Chinese assassin more than his own boss.

Oh, here's a gag at the end of Volume 7 where Power demands Kobeni thank her for killing that bad guy. Aki explains to Kobeni that not only is Power a pathological liar, but she used her blood powers to alter her own memories to believe her bullshit. So the way Power remembers it, she heroically rode into the scene with her own car and ran over a bad guy who was threatening Kobeni and Denji. I'm not saying I like Power's version of the story better, but it's definitely got its advantages.

For example, a lot of Chapter 62 is spent on Quanxi fighting.... some guy. This is the same Public Safety guy who killed Joey after Power heroically killed Joey's brother with Kobeni's Power's car. Notice how I had to mention four other characters just to put this guy in context. I think he has a name, I just didn't think I needed to bother remembering it, since 60% of Denji's bodyguards have been killed off already. This guy has multiple earrings, and apparently that made him cool enough that Fujimoto thought he deserved this big action sequence with Quanxi, who... we really don't know all that well either.

So what the hell is Denji doing during all of this? Well, he considers turning into Chainsaw Man to join the fight, but Beam warns him against it, since he might need that later on, and it would be risky to wear himself out. Then Denji steps on a nail, which was carefully placed on the floor by Tolka.

We've seen the Curse Devil's effect before, but Denji hasn't, so he has no idea what's happening to him until it's too late. Beam tries to help, but Tolka kicks him and... yeah, I guess that's it. RIP Chainsaw Man. Again.

#chainsaw man #denji #aki hayakawa #power #beam #makima #kobeni #quanxi #germany's santa claus #tolka #tolka's master #master kishibe

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